Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | JUNE 2023 | 31 Pan-utility geted bill support in place for next year, he said: "Ultimately it is the department for energy that needs to make the decision but I'm optimistic that if we want to get there we can. I would point out that we negotiated the Energy Price Guarantee within three or four•weeks." Water sector urged to prepare for challenge of hot summers The water sector's ability to respond to increasingly hot summers has been questioned. SES innovation director Jeremy Heath warned that extended periods of hotter tem- peratures puts water infrastructure at greater risk of bursts and leaks due to associated ground movement. He said that while the sector has devel- oped a good understanding of how to respond to freeze-thaw events, water compa- nies must now focus their attention on miti- gating the impact of droughts. "My concern is that these summers will be the normal going forward," Heath said, adding that the company's burst rate when drought conditions persisted last summer was the worst it had experienced for years. Last summer, drought conditions were declared across nine regions of England and hosepipe bans were imposed by ‡ ve water companies – the ‡ rst in a decade. 2022 was also the hottest the UK experienced since records began in 1659. The hot summer was followed by a colder winter than the southeast of England is used to. "This was a nightmare for spikes in bursts," Heath said. The ‡ rst spike came with the freeze, and the second more pro- nounced increase in bursts happened when the weather subsided and pipes thawed again. SES last year went live with the indus- try's ‡ rst all-smart water network. Heath described the results from its ‡ rst year as overwhelmingly positive. The company added sensors through- out its system, which feed back one-minute data every 15 minutes to make predictions for each district metered area. Heath told Utility Week Live the average burst runtime dropped 40% thanks to the Aquasite system. It allows teams to locate and pinpoint bursts to make a repair, which was previously an average of 3.9 days runt- ime, down to 2.3 days. Hybrid heat pump support 'coming soon' An o˜ cial from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) con‡ rmed that the government was looking at ways of extending support for heat pumps to hybrid options. DESNZ heat pump innovation lead Alex Hobley said that ministers are currently look- ing at how the government can support the rollout of hybrid heat pumps via the forth- coming market-based mechanism. The mechanism, consulted on in 2021, has been proposed to support investment and innovation in transforming the con- sumer proposition for heat pumps. The gov- ernment has previously said that it plans to introduce the market-based mechanism for low-carbon heat in the Energy Security Bill. When quizzed on the role of hybrid heat pumps, Hobley told Utility Week Live del- egates to "watch this space". He added: "When I ‡ rst came into the government's scheme on heat pumps, I could see there was a lot of positivity around hybrid heat pumps. Over time that positivity has waned somewhat within the department and ministers rightly want to be investing in the technology which is going to make the biggest di¢ erence. "However, I do think there is a role for hybrids and I've heard that support for them could be forthcoming via the market mechanism." Hobley was speaking a£ er pleas to over- haul the boiler upgrade scheme (BUS) from EDF zero carbon heat director Dan Hopcro£ and Imperial College London senior research fellow Salvador Acha. Hobley himself admitted that the "num- bers for the BUS are not good and there is no hiding from that". During the ‡ rst round of the BUS, which o¢ ers subsidies to consumers for installing heat pumps in their homes, £89.6 million of the £150 million budget went unspent and was clawed back by treasury. Hopcro£ added: "Why is it so hard to spend £150 million? The number of vouch- ers spent in the ‡ rst round of the scheme was about a third of what it should have been. "That is simply not good enough and what is worse is that it is not showing signs of getting better which means that the money for the second and third phase of the scheme will also go unspent. The scheme is simply not working and needs changing now." More coverage of Utility Week live, including a video interview with John Pettigrew, chief executive of National Grid, is available at: utilityweeklive.co.uk Headline show sponsor

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